How to Generate the Least Amount of Leads

How to Generate the Least Amount of Leads

Want to know how to turn your firm into a fast-sinking ship?

Start marketing with traditional advertising. According to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report, traditional advertising and PPC (pay-per-click) accounts for the least amount of leads for marketers this year, with a mere 6% of leads originating from these categories.

What will deliver on its ROI promises?

Inbound marketing, which in total delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than outbound leads.

And when we say inbound marketing, we mean blogging—43% of marketers generated customers via their blog this year—Facebooking, Tweeting, YouTube-ing, Google Plus-ing, Pinterest-ing, and e-newsletter-ing.

So, the question is, if the evidence is so compelling, then why do so many A/E/C firms still rely on traditional advertising and outbound marketing for lead generation? In PSMJ’s recent interview with Debra Andrews, Founder and President of Marketri, LLC, we sought to find an answer.  Click to see Interview

“From my experience in working with A/E/C firms, they tend to be very sales and business development driven and not focused on marketing,” Andrews said. “I believe they feel that personal relationships and having the lowest bid drives new business, and that marketing doesn’t play a role in either.”

And the stats back her up.  According to PSMJ’s 2013 A/E Fees & Pricing Benchmarking Survey Report, overall, A/E firms spend a mere 7% of their business development allocation on promotion—and that promotion is usually relegated to traditional outbound ventures, like brochures and other print materials.

What can you do to start upping your lead generation today?

·         Get with the program. This is not your daddy’s business environment! Stop acting like it. Realize that inbound marketing’s primary function is relationship building. Don’t think that because you’re communicating via a computer keyboard, your message isn’t getting across. The best advice? Talk on the phone with your old clients; cultivate on online presence to attract new clients.

·         Invest in yourself. Don’t let yourself fall into functional obsolescence by not staying current on the technology curve. There are a plethora of books, webinars, and online classes centering on inbound marketing and social media. Educate yourself.

·         Pipe down. We know you’ve had a lot of success over the years with the old-guard ways.  While there’s nothing that can replace that hard work and years of trial-by-fire experience, you DO have something to learn from your juniors.  Next time you’re in a meeting, try this:  be quiet. Listen to what the younger people in your company have to say.  They have ideas, and good ones. Let them share those ideas.  That’s why you hired them, remember?

·         Take notes. You are the leader of your company—you know its history, its strengths, its weaknesses.  You are a venerable knowledge database: the intellectual wellspring of hundreds of blogs, Tweets, and Facebook posts. Think creatively about how you can integrate your knowledge into your company’s inbound marketing realm and take notes. Share your notes with your colleagues, giving them the collateral (and credibility) needed to create insightful, wisdom-laden blogs, e-newsletter articles, and marketing e-mails.

·         Realize inbound marketing is not a one-person enterprise. If you need to beef up on inbound marketing and social media at your firm, the solution is not to hire a lone social media expert.  One person can’t do it all. Empower your marketing team to work together to create the compelling content needed to transition your company from isolated to interactive.

Want to learn more about the effects of inbound marketing on today’s marketing landscape?  Download HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report  for yourself.

Can You Hack It?

Today represents the midpoint between when the first-ever A/E/C Hackathon took place (on November 8-10, 2013 in San Francisco, CA) and when A/E/C Hackathon: 2.0 launches on Friday, March 14^th (location TBA). A weekend of play and exploration for A/E/C professionals, tech developers, and UI/UX developers to innovate, create, and discover new ways to shape the future of our built environment, the Hackathon aims to solve some of the industry’s newest—and most confounding—problems.

The Hackathon will kick off with a mixer and a discussion of this year’s hack categories (last year’s included digital fabrication, mobile tech, cloud tech, and BIM 2.0), followed by lighting round ice breakers and team formations.

On Saturday, the teams will begin their brainstorming, sketching, designs, and coding for their “hacks”—their ideas or software solutions.  Then, they work through the night—competition reality TV show style—until they present their complete (or, in most cases, incomplete) hacks on Sunday.  At that point, their hacks are judged and awards are given.

Though the location of this year’s event has yet to be announced, registration is now open.  The cost to attend is minimal (the max you’ll pay is $100), but space is extremely limited—only about 200 people will attend.

For more information on the event, visit aechackathon.com, and to see videos of last year’s event, click here.

Acuity Business Solutions Names Andreina Perez as Solutions Advisor

Andreina Perez, CPSM, LEED AP brings over 13 years of experience in project management, business development and marketing development in the construction and engineering industry.

Reston, VA

Acuity Business Solutions is proud to announce that Andreina Perez, CPSM, LEED AP has been hired to lead their business development efforts for their Deltek Vision consulting practice, and will perform the role as a Solutions Advisor. Ms. Perez is based in Philadelphia, and will be responsible for establishing long-lasting relationships with existing and potential clients.

June Jewell, President and CEO of Acuity met Andreina at an industry event and immediately recognized her talents. “We are thrilled to have someone with Andreina’s background and industry experience. She is highly motivated to help A&E firms succeed, and truly understands the value of the Deltek Vision system and how it positively impacts our clients’ profitability.”

We are excited to bring in a resource with Ms. Perez’s background. Her experience includes working with a variety of Construction and Engineering firms including Nason Construction in Philadelphia, PA as well as RDK Engineers, ACH Constructors and Skanska USA Building in Durham, NC.  She is also on the executive committee for the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Philadelphia and the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA).

Ms. Perez obtained an extensive educational and organizational background.  She completed her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Miami in 2000, as well as a M.A. in Education Research at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 2005. She is the Director of Continuing Education and a Membership Co-Chair for SMPS Philadelphia; she completed the Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) Program and in 2013 acquired the credential that recognizes her marketing and business development expertise.

For additional information, please contact:

Acuity Business Solutions
(P) 855-522-ACUITY (8489)
(F) 855-522-ACUITY (8489)
www.AcuityBusiness.com
Jessica Cheri
Marketing Administrator
jcheri@AcuityBusiness.com

Why Did We Win?

by David Whitemyer, AIA
As we begin 2014, take a moment to assess what your firm has done RIGHT.

It’s fairly common practice for A/E firms to request a debriefing from potential clients after submitting a losing proposal. This makes sense. The debriefing lets you know about the weaknesses and errors in your proposal and/or interview so that you don’t make the same mistakes in future efforts. But doesn’t it make even more sense, after winning a project, to find out what the strengths and highlights were in your proposal, so that you can repeat them?

Another reason to find out exactly why you won is to ensure that you manage the client’s expectations and keep them happy during the project. You’ll want to deliver on the promises in your proposal – especially if that’s what sold them! – and to enhance your strengths.

Most clients won’t turn down an opportunity to give you a debriefing – whether for a lose or win. In fact, with federal government clients, they’re required to give you a debriefing if you ask. FAR 15.506 states that if you make a request within three days of the win or lose notification, the client must provide formal feedback on your proposal.

There’s no trick to figuring out what to ask the client after you’ve won. The questions are almost the same as when getting feedback after a loss. “What were our strengths?” What were our weaknesses?” Here are a few suggestions for what to ask after you’ve won a project.

•     What was the main thing about our proposal that made our firm stand out?

•     Did we have the lowest price? If not, how did our price compare with other proposals?

•     Did our proposal adequately respond to everything in the RFP?

•     Was there anything about our project team that gave you comfort or concern?

•     Did the proposal’s writing style or visual quality stand out in any way?

•     Did our proposal include any fluff or boilerplate language that we should’ve left out?

•     Even though we won, do you have any recommendations of things we could’ve done differently?

•     Are the other upcoming opportunities for which we could submit another proposal?

After getting a debriefing from the client, it’s essential to share the feedback with your firm. Share it with those in the marketing and business development teams, of course, but also make sure that you share it with the team and project manager who will be the client’s primary face and contact with your firm throughout the project.

David Whitemyer, AIA, is a Contributing Editor at PSMJ Resources, Inc., a licensed architect, and project manager at a Boston-area design firm. He can be reached at dwhitemyer@psmj.com.

Does Your Firm Lack Social Media Smarts?

How big of a role do social media play in your firm?  If your answer is a frustrated “I don’t know!” or a tentative “Um, not very much,” don’t worry—you’re not alone.

In a new survey by A/E/C industry publisher Info link, it was discovered that, while firms in the building, architecture, and design trades believe the use of social media is more important to their success than a year ago, a large percentage of those same firms have a less secure grasp on just how to use social media to benefit themselves.

In addition to each of the trades—building, architecture, and design—recognizing the importance of social media, each had a higher profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ than they had the previous year; yet, the befuddlement with how to best use the three top social media outlets remained. 

In building, the percentage of those saying they did not know how to use social media doubled to 36 percent over last year’s 18 percent. For architects, it nearly tripled—48 percent from 18 percent.  And for design firms, it more than tripled, to 36 percent from 11 percent.

What’s the cause for all this confusion?

According to Infolink sales manager Adrian Wilson, as reported by Michael Bleby, many businesses have given up on social media after being unable to measure a solid ROI. Says Wilson: “To generate regular content, creative content, and thought leadership—that takes time. Most people look at it and think—it’s too hard.”  

Yet, statistics don’t lie—we know that businesses that use social media (inbound marketing in particular) have higher lead generation and higher profits (according to Hubspot, 41% of marketers say inbound marketing produced measurable ROI in 2013. Clearly, we feel this is true: after all, the survey did acknowledge that our industry sees value in social media—we just don’t know how to use it!

So, what’s the answer?  What can you do as an A/E marketer to effectively weave social media into your firm’s marketing strategy?

• Start small. Stop looking at LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ like the behemoths they seem to be.  Stop Googling “Social Media Marketing Techniques” and becoming overwhelmed by the thousands of pages that pop up.  Start small.  Resist the temptation to allow yourself to get overwhelmed.

• No, really.  I mean it.  I wasn’t kidding.  Start really, really small.  I mean, 5-10 minutes a day small.  You know that really great blog that you read once a week?  Or that website you ran across?  Or that app your grandson just told you about?  Or that interesting e-mail forward from Flipboard someone sent you?  Post it on Facebook.  Post it on LinkedIn.  Make a comment about it.  That’s it.

• Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. You spend a lot of time in meetings.  You have a lot of ideas—some of them that go against the grain.  You know, the ones that you ramble to your spouse about.  Write them down:  I’m not talking prose, I’m talking bullet points.  The next day, put a few of those bullet points into sentences.  Then post it on your company’s blog site.  And most important—say at the end of the blog post that you’ll be posting another one next week.  Promises made to the world wide web are often ones we keep.

• Tweet us what you learned.  Next time you go to a conference, keep a running tab of points and tips you learned.  And tweet them!  Tweet the tips along with a few pics of the conference.  It’s a great way to keep people engaged, let people in the industry know you’re staying relevant, and reap some potential re-tweet love.

Most important, don’t let yourself become a statistic next year—set a goal to be a company that not just knows it needs social media, but knows how to use it.

BMW Guggenheim Lab Challenges Industry’s View of the Future of Urban Life

In the holiday rush, don’t let this fall off your twice-checked list: a visit to the Guggenheim Museum to view the exhibition Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab. 

The two-year culmination of the “urban think tank”’s work and travel (as the Lab is known) across New York, Berlin, and Mumbai, the exhibition’s goals are to explore new design, experimentation, and thinking for city life.

As a result of tours, workshops, debates, and discussions, the Lab discovered 100 trends within each of the three studied cities.  Explanations and examples of the trends are showcased at the Guggenheim until the end of the exhibition’s run on January 5, 2014.

Here, based on the Lab’s findings, PSMJ presents what we see as the Top 10 Trends that will affect the U.S. cityscape, and have direct bearing on the A/E/C industry, within the next ten years:

1) Non-Iconic Architecture:   Non-iconic architecture strives to prioritize the human scale of a space over its merely sculptural value and defends the importance of simplicity and functionality in design.

2) Micro Architecture: Micro architecture is the practice of using design solutions to adapt small urban spaces, thereby changing the behavior of city dwellers and activating underutilized areas.

3) Green Space: Urban green spaces can include parks, greenways, nature paths, gardens, and waterfronts. Green spaces provide ecological functions for cities—carbon sequestration, water purification, and cooling—and also allow people to interact with nature. Plentiful public green spaces are a critical feature of good urban design.

4) Dumpster Design: Dumpster design is an approach that employs used or discarded objects as raw materials for new products. Dumpster design has emerged out of a growing trend toward sustainable consumption, which promotes alternative economic structures facilitated by sharing, recycling, and “freecycling.”

5) Emotional Cityness: Emotional cityness is the rejection of impersonal and cold relationships in large urban areas in favor of face-to-face, convivial, and empathic interaction. In a climate of rapid urbanization and uncertainty, with dynamics leading toward social fragmentation, there is an increasing need for new connectivity in urban environments that can be achieved through the strengthening of personal relationships. Social interaction within cities is a vehicle toward community cohesiveness.

6) Inclusive Design: “Inclusive design” refers to design based on a user-centered approach. The goal of inclusive design is to ensure that devices, products, environments, and experiences remain equally accessible to everyone, regardless of age, culture, or ability. In today’s world, we see an increasing need for this kind of approach, since a diverse population requires more accessible environments, consumer items, interfaces, and services.

7) Aging Population: Today, 20 percent of the population is older than sixty-five; by 2060, every third person will have reached that age. The effect of the aging population on the urban environment and on social services is one of the most significant global challenges and opportunities of the next fifty years. Urban design, community initiatives, and public services can help meet the needs of young and old citizens alike.

8) Design Barriers: Design barriers are construction choices that limit or control an individual’s access to urban spaces. From “No Loitering” signs to benches with armrests designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, our cities are full of devices meant to disperse and divide citizens along lines of race, class, and age.

9) Social Design: Social design reminds designers of their responsibility toward society. Since we live in a social world defined by interaction, it is natural that our actions have an impact on other people’s lives. Design can be seen, therefore, as a tool to promote social change. The development of projects engaged with communities, governments, and other organizations enables design to deal with social issues and commit to its important role in society.

10) Accessibility: “Accessibility” describes the ease with which something can be reached, obtained, used, or understood by as many people as possible. Though often used in reference to accessibility design—urban design that takes into account the full spectrum of other-abled (including elderly, disabled, and handicapped) individuals by creating a user-friendly urban and domestic environment.

For full definitions and more information about the BMW Guggenheim Lab and the Participatory City exhibition, visit: http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org.

Open Mouth, Insert... Increased Employee Engagement?

In his article I Can’t Find Enough Good People … ! in the November issue of PSMJ, award-winning author, thought leader, and A/E/C industry expert Bob Kelleher wrote about the national crisis facing A/E/C firm leaders everywhere in training and developing their employee base.

The article corresponded with the release of Kelleher’s employee engagement video “Who’s Sinking Your Boat?”, which powerfully and startlingly illustrates the average level of engagement among American workers at a typical firm (hint: it’s abysmally low).
The question is, if we’re in such bad shape, what do we do about it?
The Aberdeen Group’s June 2013 Employee PerformanceManagement Research Brief provides some insights:

1)      Conversations between employees and managers that establish performance goals and agreed-upon development plans should be the number one priority. Managers who consistently keep their employees up-to-date on targets—and show how those targets align with the company’s overall goals—have employees exceed performance expectations by 20%.  Those same employees are also 10% more engaged.

2)      Managers should be enabled with technology to support performance management. Managers that are provided the appropriate tools—such as automated performance management resources—are better able to manage their employees.

3)      Conversations between managers and employees should be frequent and both formal and informal. The Research Brief showed that the more conversations managed had with employees, the better the employees performed.  Moreover, when the employees’ performance was tied directly to its effect on the company, the employees did better overall.

So, make a deal with yourself: make it your priority to talk to one of your employees today.  Remember, it’s okay if it’s an informal chat.  What’s important is to get the communication started.

For employee engagement and leadership workshops, check out Bob Kelleher’s The Employee Engagement Group.